On April 16, 1994, three employees were shot and killed and a fourth employee was seriously injured at a
Popeyes
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Inc. is an American multinational chain of fried chicken restaurants founded in 1972 in New Orleans and headquartered in Miami. It is currently a subsidiary of Toronto-based Restaurant Brands International. , Popey ...
restaurant in
Gadsden, Alabama
Gadsden is the county seat of Etowah County in the U.S. state of Alabama. It is located on the Coosa River about northeast of Birmingham and southwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is the primary city of the Gadsden Metropolitan Statist ...
. The perpetrators, Robert Bryant Melson (June 5, 1971 – June 8, 2017)
and Cuhuatemoc Hinricky Peraita (born May 19, 1976),
[ robbed the restaurant of over $2,100, led the four employees into a freezer, and then shot all four of them.
Melson was sentenced to death for the crime and executed in 2017. Peraita received a life sentence; however, he was later sentenced to death for killing another inmate in prison. Peraita remains on death row.
]
Shooting
On the night of April 15, 1994, Melson and Peraita entered a Popeyes restaurant in east Gadsden through the back door of the building after employee Darrell K. Collier unlocked it to allow fellow employees Nathaniel Baker and Bryant Archer to take out the trash. Upon entry, Melson and Peraita ordered Archer, Baker, Collier, and another employee, Tamika Collins, into the restaurant's office and demanded that they empty the safe. They complied, after which Melson ordered the group to get inside the restaurant's freezer. Shortly after locking them in the freezer, Melson unlocked the door and opened fire. Baker, Collier, and Collins all died of their wounds before paramedics arrived. Archer was shot four times, but he survived and was able to crawl to the restaurant's office to call 911. The killings happened shortly after midnight in the early hours of April 16.
Legal proceedings
Melson was convicted of his role in the crime, was sentenced to death on May 17, 1996, and placed on death row under Alabama Department of Corrections
The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is the agency responsible for incarceration of convicted felons in the state of Alabama in the United States. It is headquartered in the Alabama Criminal Justice Center in Montgomery.
Alabama has re ...
ID 0000Z601.[ Peraita was sentenced to life without parole. He killed a fellow inmate on December 11, 1999, and was given a death sentence in October 2001. Melson had two execution dates set in 2010, both of which were stayed. On April 5, 2017, Melson had an execution date set for June 8, 2017. He received a temporary stay from an appellate court on June 2, but the ]U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...
vacated the stay on June 6 without comment. At 5:45 p.m. on the night of the execution, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a temporary stay so Justice Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American lawyer and jurist who has served since 1991 as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. President George H. W. Bush nominated him to succeed Thurgood Marshall. Afte ...
could review Melson's appeals. The stay was later lifted and the execution began at 9:55 p.m. Melson was pronounced dead at 10:27 p.m.
See also
* List of death row inmates in the United States
, there were 2,067 death row inmates in the United States, including 46 women. The number of death row inmates changes frequently with new convictions, appellate decisions overturning conviction or sentence alone, commutations, or deaths (throug ...
* List of people executed in Alabama
The following is a list of people executed by the U.S. state of Alabama since capital punishment was resumed in the United States in 1976. All of the 81 people (80 men and 1 woman) have been executed at the Holman Correctional Facility, near Atmo ...
* List of people executed in the United States in 2017
Twenty-three people, all male, were executed in the United States in 2017, all by lethal injection. The state of Arkansas executed four people in April, ending a hiatus on executions in the state which had lasted for over 11 years. Virginia conduc ...
* List of shootings in Alabama
Notable shootings in the U.S. state of Alabama include:
See also
* Crime in Alabama
* List of shootings in California
* List of shootings in Colorado
* List of shootings in Florida
* List of shootings in New York
* List of shootings in Te ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Popeyes shooting, 1994
1994 in Alabama
1994 mass shootings in the United States
1994 murders in the United States
April 1994 crimes in the United States
Attacks on buildings and structures in 1994
Attacks on restaurants in the United States
Mass murder in 1994
Mass murder in the United States in the 1990s
Mass shootings in Alabama
Robberies in the United States